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Science Fiction Underdogs
Peter Jackson helped to produce District 9, by first-time director Neill Blomkamp, where a derelict space ship arrives over Johannesburg, South Africa. After years on earth, segregated in camps and barely tolerated, the aliens (or "prawns") are being relocated to a new camp, further out of humankind's way. When middle-management bureaucrat in charge of the relocation finds himself being hunted by his own government, he retreats into District 9 and finds the one alien who can help him get his life back. District 9 integrates high quality special effects and intense action with a documentary style and an "in the middle of the action" feel, which made the film a surprise hit in theaters this summer. On DVD and Blu Ray.
A virtual reality training program goes awry in Ghost Machine, when a group of American technicians offer to play a hyperreal "game" with a group of U.K. military trainees. When one of them is injured inside the virtual world, a rescue team has to go in to retrieve him in a strange reality where the normal rules are bent while being hunted by an unexplainable presence within the game. If they are going to save their friends and survive, the group has to adapt to their new world and uncover the secret of what wants to torture and kill them. With Sean Faris and Rachael Taylor.
Romance (but not necessarily love)
As seen through the eyes of Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), (500) Days of Summer jumps around between the beginning, middle, and end of his relationship with Summer (Zooey Deschanel). The film captures his time as both a hopeless romantic, infatuated with the new girl at the office, and his coping with heartbreak and rejection. Seen through the whole process by his friends (Geoffrey Arend and Matthew Gray Gubler) and his wise-beyond-her-years little sister (Chloe Moretz) Tom recalls all the first and lasts of his times with Summer, the good and the bad, sometimes subjectively, as she defines his first love.
Blind Date stars Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson who try to rescue their marriage by going on a series of "blind dates." Estranged by the death of their daughter, the two play an elaborate game of pretend so that, as strangers, they can re-engage with one another and see their relationship in a new light.
Comedies
Sandra Bullock stars in All About Steve as an enthusiastic but strange girl who gets set up with 
Steve (Bradley Cooper), and though she's immediately thrilled to be on a date with him, he's grateful for an emergency that gets him out of the date. She's not easily dissuaded, though, and sees events in her life as signs that she needs to go out on the road and track down her dream date... which leads to a series of comic misadventures and the possibility that Steve may not reciprocate her feelings, but there's nothing that can stop a girl this irrepressibly quirky. With Thomas Hayden Church, Ken Jeong, and DJ Qualls.
The newest movie by Mike Judge is Extract, about Joel (Jason Bateman), a small business owner in a rut. With his wife (Kristen Wiig) showing no interest in their sex life and a rival company making an offer to buy his business for an impressive amount of money, Joel's got to make some serious decisions about a funny workplace: his life sprawls around his bartender best friend (Ben Affleck), a beautiful young grifter (Mila Kunis), an injured employee (Clifton Collins Jr), and an oblivious manager (J.K. Simmons) as they all try to save or destroy him...
and a little more
The documentary It Might Get Loud is a guitar-based documentary that details the approach of three very different players have to the instrument: Jimmy Page (Led Zepplin), The Edge (U2), and Jack White (The White Stripes). The film spends time with each of them and their guitars, and then puts the three of them together in one room to talk... and play.
Michael Douglas plays Martin Hunter, hotshot lawyer with his eyes on politics, in Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, but a young journalist (Jesse Metcalfe) is investigating suspicions that Hunter has been falsifying to evidence earn his reputation. When the journalist frames himself in a murder investigation to prove the corruption, he doesn't explain his ruse to his assistant-DA girlfriend (Amber Tamblyn), who is now caught between her boss's ambition and her boyfriend's exposé.
A modern update, the new Call of the Wild stars Ariel Gade as a girl who finds a great friend in a mixed wolf/dog when visiting her grandfather (Christopher Lloyd). When she wants to take the wolf home with her to the city, her grandfather begins to read her the novel Call of the Wild to help show her that a wolf's place is in the wild. The movie cuts between the modern story and the classic novel, and is available in both 3D and normal 2D.
New this week to Reckless Video's TV New Releases are the 2nd series of the UK time travel/police procedural Life On Mars, as well as the second Family Guy Star Wars Special Something, Something, Something, Dark Side, and the 16th collection of Mystery Science Theater 3000, which includes The Corpse Vanishes, Warriors of the Lost World, Santa Claus, and Night of the Blood Beast.